


Harder

by Sunless_sea



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: F/M, Hungover Strike, Pining, Singing, Strike being domestic, happy robin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:41:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23107909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunless_sea/pseuds/Sunless_sea
Summary: A fic inspired by the Jax Jones & Bebe Rexha song "Harder". set while Robin and Matthew are still married. A healthy dose of Strike's longing for Robin, peppered with his reflections on some of the other women in his life.
Relationships: Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	Harder

**Author's Note:**

> The years don't quite work out with the release date of the song: forgive me.

It was a still day in early August, and Robin was at her desk. Her mood, already buoyed by the weather, was further elevated by the immortal power of pop music. She’d heard Jax Jones and Bebe Rexha’s single, “Harder”, on Radio 1 a few weeks ago, and it hadn’t left her head since. The bassline seemed to run through her like an electric current. She’d danced to it making the pasta last night (to what, she suspected, was Matthew’s embarrassment), she’d sung in the shower before work, she’d even bopped a little on the Tube, and she’d had her earphones in all morning. Deciding to stretch her legs and get their sandwiches a little early, she called to Strike that she was nipping out, and searched in her handbag for her purse, still listening to the song. Though she thought she was singing under her breath, the music was so loud that she was easily audible, especially to other detectives whose job was, in part, eavesdrop.

Strike, who had looked up from his work at Robin’s call, raised his eyebrows. He had never before heard Robin sing. He heard her surprisingly clear soprano ring out: “When you think you’ve done enough, can you love me harder, ‘cause you know I need that...” before the office door muffled her voice. Strike smiled to himself that Robin was happy enough to sing, even though he was feeling as if he’d been run over by a truck himself. Hardacre had been in town last night, and they had got, as his old colleague had always so tactlessly said, legless. The hangover was making it hard to concentrate on the document at hand, a summary of his latest surveilance. He put it aside and got up to make a cup of tea. While the kettle boiled, he sat down heavily at Robin’s computer, opened a private browsing window, and typed in the lyrics he had automatically committed to memory.

A preview of a YouTube video appeared. It showed a man in a cap and leopard-print shirt, and a woman in a wedding dress, embracing and beaming at each another. The title was “Harder”. He clicked on it. A silky female voice slid over the airwaves produced by Robin’s small bluetooth speakers, and despite himself, Strike found he was enjoying the overacted video. Classic pop, you didn’t need Dr Freud to interpret the lyrics: “Put in work and don’t give up, can you love me harder, ‘cause you know I need that...” Christ, it would be a video of a wedding. And with such a fit bride too (though not, he thought, the fittest). He listened with a growing grin, feeling his mood lighten as the characters in the video danced.

The vocals in the last section of the song reminded him, suddenly, of his mother. He remembered Leda harmonising effortlessly with whatever was playing on their small radio – one of the few possessions that she had taken to every squat and flat she inhabited. He thought of Leda’s first, very brief marriage, from which she had gained the name Strike, and of her second, disastrous union. He played the video again, and rewatched the square-jawed husband feeling up the bridesmaids. How many women, he wondered, were trapped in marriages to men who were determined to disregard them?

The kettle clicked off and he started, closing the page. When he was safely back at his own desk, mug of tea in hand, he pulled out his mobile to play the track. It didn’t do the bass justice, but he was more interested in the singing. He would never have admitted it to Ilsa, the most unashamed pop fan he knew, but the song could only be described as a banger. Memories of his mother aside. Each time he heard the lyrics, he got a tiny thrill at the thought of Robin singing them on her way to the shops. Robin’s mouth shaping the words “whole night”. And that little synth in place of the singer saying what she needed, and the looks between the bride and the DJ...It was too good to contemplate at work. He switched off his phone just as Robin re-entered the office.

That night, in his attic flat, Strike resumed listening while he stood over his small stove. He was trying to eat better and take some more weight off his leg. Tonight was dhal and rice, and old recipe. The chopping seemed to go much more quickly when he was listening to the song. Strike’s own singing voice, a gravelly baritone, was not something he had exercised much in Charlotte’s Mayfair flat. Or anywhere else within earshot of another human being. Charlotte never sang for fun: it would have been too free and easy a thing. He had loved her harder, in the innuendo sense, and in every other. It had been hard work. She had always said he was the only one who would do, just like the singer in the video. He snorted at the thought of her life as Mrs Jago Ross. Apparently, he was not. 

And from thoughts of Charlotte, he couldn’t help himself from thinking about Robin. What an extraordinary contrast she was his ex-fiance. He couldn’t stop himself thinking of her smiling face, her easy pleasure in all the small things: a cup of tea and a biscuit together, a walk in the sunshine, a satisfied client. He thought of how she wrinkled her nose when she laughed, and how she might look dancing at a party. How beautiful she had been in her own wedding dress, in that moment on the stairs. He thought of how it might feel to be cooking a meal for both of them, of how relaxed she would be even at his formica table. How she’d tease him about the most recent divorced client intent on making a pass at him. How quickly and earnestly she would turn her blade-like mind from joking to discussing their new, and very tricky, forgery case. How she would feel in his arms. The song ended, and he heard an ominous sizzling. He was burning the onions, and he swore and took them off the heat before pressing play again.


End file.
